” Tests have been carried out under carefully controlled conditions to see whether the attenuation of high-frequency signals sent over a given long-distance radio path differs according to the direction of transmission. The results obtained both across the North Atlantic and between Australia and the United Kingdom show that at times the loss in both directions is substantially the same, and that at other times the loss difference can rise to values of the order of 5 or 10 dB”.

In November 2014 XYL and I made a trip to Tenerife. I looked for a hotel with a good radio location and a room with “sea view”. The choice fell on hotel “Luabay” in Puerto de la Cruz. There was a free take off across the Atlantic Ocean from the Southwest to the Northeast.

The equipment was a FT 817nd with a small PS, an ATU, a manipulator of soldered copper laminate pieces and earpieces. The antenna was a wire along a 5 meter long telescopic fishing rod, an equally long counterpoise wire and a short wire with a powerful battery clamp for earthing to the balcony railing. The antenna was fed with 5 meters of RG-58 which was wound on a ferrite core at the antenna. The antenna pointed due west. The tuner managed to adjust the antenna system from 30 m to 15 m.

Most contacts were made with HAMs on the East Coast of the United States. Some were rag chew QSOs with QRP stations, having between 1 and 10 watts. But also numerous contacts with Europe, South America and the Caribbean. All contacts were made on CW.

I only had the antenna on the balcony when it was dark:

Below are some Reverse Beacon spots.

Good signals on 20m late at night at the end of November with 5W and a piece of wire.

At home in Stockholm the band closed when the sun sets early in the afternoon.

For 80 meters there are two inverted vee dipoles with apexes 20 meters above ground. One is provided with a parasitic element, which can be configured either as a director or reflector. The directions are SW or NE.

The other one has one leg almost horizontal towards SW and the other leg is going down almost vertically with the end about 7 meters to the NW. One could call it an inverted L dipole.

For 160 m the whole tower plus the top mast, around 28 m, is used with the Yagi antennas as a capacitive top load. The tower is supplied with Gamma Match and connected to a sparse radial system. Self-resonance is 2.2 MHz.